


The Best Equation

by Indigo2831



Category: MacGyver (TV 2016)
Genre: Action/Adventure, Cold Open-y, Found Family, Gen, Hurt Angus Macgyver (Macgyver 2016), Jack is Awesome, Mild Hurt/Comfort, Phoenix Fam, Protective Jack Dalton (MacGyver 2016)
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-07-21
Updated: 2020-07-21
Packaged: 2021-03-05 02:33:34
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,099
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25416967
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Indigo2831/pseuds/Indigo2831
Summary: A cold-openy short set sometime in late season one.  MacGyver's improvisation backfires sometimes.  This is one of those times.
Relationships: Jack Dalton & Angus MacGyver (MacGyver TV 2016)
Comments: 22
Kudos: 66





	The Best Equation

**Author's Note:**

> *waves timidly* Hi, everyone! I started watching and loving MacGyver about six weeks ago. I hadn't planned to start writing for another fandom, but the show is just to delicious not to delve into. I love the world they've created, and how Mac and Co feel like a new version of a TV hero, and a better one. So here's me stretching my legs in this new universe, getting my bearings. Please let me know what you think.

A fist hitting a face makes a particular, fleshy sound that’s more hollow than one would imagine. MacGyver wonders if he should investigate the acoustics of it, but then that notion is bashed from his mind by a meaty fist and a snarl of aggression. 

His head snaps back, and he lets his body follow the momentum of the haymaker. He careens into a chair older than Jack, its cheap wood splintering beneath him. Shards of splintered wood gouge and impale, but MacGyver is already scuttling backward through debris strewn about the rotting, dirt-caked floor. The heels of his boots drag through the filth to reveal the long, wide boards of the floor below. 

MacGyver’s brain churns and whirs even as the last and largest standing member of the terrorist group’s security advances, ready to main and kill all in the name of international mayhem. Jack often likens kick-starting MacGyver’s thought process to hamsters running on a wheel but it’s more comparable to a computer running a search with specific parameters on a library database to find an image that becomes steadily clearer (or stays frustratingly blurred if you’re specific and famously unsolvable equations like the Yang-Mills equation). The sight of the old wooden floor conjures up the tensile strength of wood. The consumption rates of Saskatchewanian termites. The most common wide-plank wooden floors in 19th century warehouses. 

The math takes a bit longer to do as MacGyver is too busy rolling away as the assailant tries to stomp him, and flinging objects at his face to keep him at bay. Finally, with his calculations in place, he searches for what he can use. He takes advantage of his lean frame and wedges himself behind a toppled shelving unit. “I’m good, Jack, stop panicking,” Mac shouts into his comms to quiet Jack.

One of the more complicated things about constant in-ear communication is that the entire team can hear everything. The grunts and unique sound of a physical fight are some of the most intensely terrifying things to overhear. 

He uses the cover of the shelf and his Swiss army knife to unbolt a heavy piece of machinery (an industrial sized vice-grip, he thinks) from the floorboards before the balding hulk of a man realizes he could fling it across the room, instead of trying to haul and/or pummel him from in between the rust-weakened shelves. The last rusted screw, more crumbles than turns, and he frees the object just as his assailant upends the shelf with an oddly theatrical growl and tossing it in a clatter of metal and the trill of broken glass. 

“Still good,” Mac huffs dishonestly into his comms, wincing at Jack's shouts intensify.

“Proceed as planned--get the program, trash the servers and go. I’m right behind you.” He anticipates Jack’s profane refusal, and is always warmed by his loyalty. But MacGyver doesn’t need time to do this equation: securing a computer program that can break through government firewalls therefore rendering all intel rip for the selling and blackmailing is more important than his life. “Riley, get him to ex-fil,” he commands, tapping off his comms.

MacGyver bolts to the center of the room, abs burning as he carries the heavy machinery. He pauses with a mocking smirk to lure the muscle closer, into position. It works. Mac rocks on the balls of his feet as he waits, biding his time until the perfect moment, then he dips down, bending at the knees, to launch the heavy iron into the air, twisting it so it lands at the right angle, perpendicular to the direction of the running wood boards.

Both men, caked in a disgusting sheen of sweat and dirt and blood, watch it arc into the air, their heads following its path until it crashes into the floor, snapping the already weakened wood. Baldy’s eyes flare wide as the boards give way, and he drops, landing with a shocked scream and a squelching crunch. 

MacGyver doesn’t spare a second to celebrate as the boards vibrate beneath his feet, and wail their discontent. “Continuous flooring,” he groans before the boards tip like a macabre seesaw, and he’s plummeting, too. 

To the solid stone floor before.

Heart in his throat, MacGyver doesn’t bother fighting against the forces of gravity, and saves his energy to fight instinct, and the mind-freezing fear that overtakes him when he sees the ground careening towards him. With a horrified cry, he forces his body to unclench instead of tensing in anticipation of impact. Once his feet hit the ground, he twists, and instinctively whips his arms over his head. His thigh and knee slams against the ground with such force that neon streaks ooze into his vision and his teeth sink into the gristle of his tongue. Mouth flooded with warm copper, the rest of his body hits the floor, and he rolls with the momentum, smacking into a blunted corner of a stone wall.

The Canadian warehouse is overtaken to a sharp, nebulous static that blunts everything, except the thunderous pain. Lungs stuttering, MacGyver gasps and wheezes into the chilled air, trying to breathe with shocked lungs and a deflated diaphragm. His senses take turns short-circuiting, overheated by the tight, rolling ache that zips up and down the entire left side of his body.

Choking, MacGyver manages to slump nearly prone and hacks blood and bile onto the floor. 

He finds the broken pieces of his in-ear monitor scattered a few feet away. _Crap_. He’d already used his and Jack’s phone earlier, and with shattered comps he has no way to contact the team for help. 

With a ragged determination, he blinks to clear his warbling vision, and assess the condition of his body. Battered but not broken. He hopes. 

Clamoring to all fours leaves him coughing and profoundly nauseous. Standing is closer to excruciating than he’d like to admit, but he has no choice but to walk it off. Ex-fil is nearly five klicks away, and MacGyver is alone. 

It’s a rare thing when fear for his own wellbeing, and not the breakneck speed of an op, that muddies his mind, and it costs him all of his remaining fight not to descend into panic. He inhales carefully, grimacing at the shift of abused ribs, and exhales just as gingerly. The cleansing breaths help tamp down the festering terror of being abandoned in a foreign country. He just has to work the problem. The nearest road is less than a klick away. Mac doesn’t think his leg is broken, so he should be able to make it before dark, and reaching help is just a matter of a flagged down car and a cover story away. He's in Canada, after all. He can do this. 

“So you haven’t figured out how to make wings, yet?” the drawling voice of Jack Dalton calls from from behind him.

MacGyver lifts his head to find Jack, haloed in dusty light that the savior he tends to be, tucking his gun in the chest holster of his TAC vest. 

“Or a jet pack? I’m still holdin’ out hope on the jet pack.”

“Didn’t have enough time,” MacGyver pants with a relief so profound it leaves him shaking. He spits blood again. 

Jack’s eyebrows climb, and he shoots a look up at the catered hole in the ceiling and the dust all over Mac. He rushes forward, hands fluttering in unveiled concern. “What the hell? Do we need a medic?”

MacGyver waves him off, “Bit my tongue.” Then opts for distraction. “Did Riley get the program? Kill the servers?” 

“All 121 Giggawatts of it.” 

“Gigabytes,” MacGyver hisses as he takes a few tentative steps, testing to see if his leg will bear weight. It does, albeit with agonizing protest.

“You didn’t leave for ex-fil?” 

“I’m stubborn that way,” Jack shrugs. “You keep forgetting that I’m your Overwatch, hoss.” 

An instant later, there’s a crutch buttressed under his arm; it smells of sweat, gunpowder and Old Spice, but it’s the strongest thing he knows. Supporting him as always. In all ways. 

Together, they hobble out of the warehouse, and around Big Bad’s body, not before Jack can give a deft kick for complicating their heist and nearly getting Mac killed. 

As they venture into freedom, a battered, doorless Jeep that’s more rust than car sputters up to the entrance. Its engine groans and grinds, and the exhaust belches an acrid smoke that reeks of burnt metal. Three of its tires are deflated. Riley and Bozer pop their heads out. 

“Guess who just earned their hotwiring merit badge?” Bozer boasts dusting off his shoulder.

“Guess who told him not to pick the car that had a family of possums living in it?” Riley echoes with a grimace of disgust.

"It's not like there's a Carmax nearby, Riley. Why do you have to rain on my parade?"

Jack settles MacGyver into the world’s stinkiest getaway vehicle, and they clunker towards ex-fil.

******

The arrhythmic trundle of clear air turbulence might be unnerving for some but for MacGyver, every rumble and shake is a reminder of security and solace at 35,000 feet. Eyes closed, still clinging to the last drowsy wisps of slumber that blunt the ache of his battered body, he sinks into his favorite plush chair, and absorbs the warmth of a perfumed microfleece blanket tucked around him. 

Finally, his eyes drift open, and he finds Riley slumped in the seat across from him, waves of black hair piled on the shoulder, rig balanced precariously on her lap.

His long legs are pillowed on her seat, and her position matches him, the tips of Riley’s toes edged between his right side and the arm of the chair. It’s unexpected for them to be curled up like a litter of puppies but it’s far from unwelcome. Personal boundaries are generally obliterated in the field. A warmth flutters through him when he realizes her feet are holding a sodden icepack to his battered thigh and knee. 

With a shift of tired eyes, he finds Jack and Bozer slumped on opposite ends of the couch, Bozer’s toed out of his shoes while Jack has traded his restrictive kevlar for the softness of a Dallas Cowboys snuggie. His whistling snores are audible over the buzz of the engine and the shudder of turbulence, but Mac knows his 9mm is within reach and his aim, even barely conscious, he is sniper-sure. 

The table is littered with scattered wrappers and scraps of cellophane, evidence of Jack and Bozer’s traditional post-mission junk food binge, and he can hear a scene of a “Die Hard 2” movie wafting from Bozer’s iPad, though both men are oblivious to it.

Rain crackles against the reinforced windows as the jet makes a rough, gliding turn, carving a tremulous path through the battling air currents. Mac settles back in his chair, not immediately searching for sleep but relishing in his favorite part of the mission. Long ago, he realized some time between burning down his high school football field and leaving MIT for the Army that he had been gifted with a slightly dark predilection for danger and action, and the priceless ability to compartmentalize, shuttering away terror and panic, in the face of grave danger and unspeakable pain. And yet, the most beloved part of the job isn’t the fanfare after a successful mission or even the rush of joy and adrenaline when his scientific improvisation actually works. It was this right here--the treasured calm that immediately follows the calamity of a mission. It’s the metal and thermoplastic cocoon of the Phoenix jet that’s stocked with Jack and Bozer’s preferred treats and a robust wi-fi network that Riley personally supped up. It’s Riley’s nails clicking on the keys as she types up her after-action reports, too wired to sleep. It’s Jack refusing to let Mac rest until he’s fussed over his purpling leg or swollen wrist and him down two bottles of water. The equation of home and family. It’s improvised and shoddy, slapped together with duct tape and paperclips; bravery and love.

MacGyver wouldn’t and couldn’t trade the little he's done to stave off disasters and better small corners of the world, and he knows his team wouldn’t either. That’s why he leans into these rare moments of sleepy serenity whenever he can without paperclip twisting or tinkering to distract him or dilute them. After a while, exhaustion takes over, and he snuggles back into beneath his blanket and falls asleep to Jack and Bozer groggily squabbling about where to re-start the movie.


End file.
